Speaking for myself, the difference is that I would always place the life of my wife over the life of her unborn baby.

I couldn't agree with you more Larni. I couldn't agree with you any more. When a ship goes down in the ocean, you can't rescue someone else while you your self are still drowning. You have to be reaching from a place of safety before you can ever offer a hand of safety.

I'm guessing you didn't feel the need to back read and see why it became "relevant." But it does become relevant when someone tries to imply that all pregnancy is so risky that termination of another persons life is an acceptable practice just based on that risk alone.

Personhood involves several things, one is being an individual. As long as the thing under discussion is simply a growth attached to the mother, it is not a person.

See now... the problem with drawing such simplistic lines in the sand, such is this, and saying "anything on that side doesn't qualify as a person," is that there is always a situation that completely eradicates the line. For example, have you considered how many conjoined twins in the world just cringed when they read your comment that implies that one of them is nothing more than an expendable growth?

If there's no brain, no activity. If there's no electro-chemical impulses moving through the brain, no activity. This is precisely the way we determine whether a person is alive or not in a hospital, why should it not be used universally?

Except for the fact that you seem to be completely overlooking the countless people who were declared clinically dead in hospitals and yet revived to make a complete and full recovery. Don't forget that when someone is clinically dead, all measurable brain activity stops within 20 to 40 seconds. This fact completely destroys the notion that measurable brain activity is a good criteria for determining person hood. And again those were people who mostly all had a very grim prognosis by the doctors. So how much more is the person hood of someone we can know with pretty good certainty will have full brain activity within only 9 months?

You're conflating an embryo and a human in a hospital. This is part of the anthropomorphization I mentioned in a higher post. The embryo feels nothing, knows nothing, cares not a whit what happens to it because it has no brain activity yet.

First of all I believe, if I'm not mistaken, you are the one who said that person hood was determined by next of kin in the hospital and compared their pulling the plug with an abortion. Secondly "feeling, caring, and knowing" is not what determines person hood. As I pointed out above there are plenty of "persons" who were incapable of all of those things and still held the status of person hood.

But why can't we determine if it is a person? In all other instances at the other end of the spectrum, i.e. death, we use brain activity as a determiner of personhood. Why is that no longer a good measure in the womb?

Again, in all the "other" instances to which you are referring, the prognosis is the key. Sure if a person loses all brain function and the prognosis of a qualified physician is that the person will never again regain said function, then and only then is it even considered to "pull the plug." I doubt you will find many physicians who would declare such a prognosis over a fetus in the womb that the mother is considering terminating.

Well I'm sorry but it is immoral to decide one's person hood based on something as wishy washy as majority opinion.

I happen to agree.

But in reality we make immoral choices all the time, just to get by. Abortion is just one of them.

That's the world we live in.

The above ontological example models the zero premise to BB theory. It does so by applying the relative uniformity assumption that the alleged zero event eventually ontologically progressed from the compressed alleged sub-microscopic chaos to bloom/expand into all of the present observable order, more than it models the Biblical record evidence for the existence of Jehovah, the maximal Biblical god designer.-Attributed to Buzsaw Message 53

The explain to them any scientific investigation that explains the existence of things qualifies as science and as an explanation-Attributed to Dawn Bertot Message 286

Does a query (thats a question Stile) that uses this physical reality, to look for an answer to its existence and properties become theoretical, considering its deductive conclusions are based against objective verifiable realities.-Attributed to Dawn Bertot Message 134

This fact completely destroys the notion that measurable brain activity is a good criteria for determining person hood.

I've yet to see anything that can meaningfully be called a "person" that actually lacks a brain. Whilst I suspect that setting any absolute single criteria for human personhood is going to run into difficulties some sort of brain development based position seems more justifiable than most.

In context we were discussing specifically those zygotes that are being considered for termination.

Really, because you were replying to a post by Rahvin the major portion of which consisted of discussing the high rate of failure to implant and other forms of spontaneous abortion or miscarriage. Perhaps you could have made it a bit clearer exactly what direction you wished to move the goal posts in in your post rather than expecting us to divine it psychically.

So what you are saying is that your reply to Rhavin was actually in the context of a completely different discussion you were having with Perdition about people who were brain dead and fetuses rather than people in comas and the sort of embryos Rahvin was talking about? Perhaps it is I who should be watching you.

Also you appear not to know what a zygote is. A zygote is the initial one cell stage after fertilisation and the first few subsequent cell division, this develops into the morula at 32 cells and then into the blastocyst. All this happens within the first 5 days after fertilisation. An embryo is not considered a fetus until around the 9th week after fertilisation. But I suppose equivocating with these sort of distinctions is one of the primary strategies that those who object to abortion favour.

I'm guessing you didn't feel the need to back read and see why it became "relevant." But it does become relevant when someone tries to imply that all pregnancy is so risky that termination of another persons life is an acceptable practice just based on that risk alone.

But no one stated or asserted that so it is irrelevant.

Certainly there is a natural risk involved in a pregnancy but it is just one of the factors that would be considered in each individual case. It is up to the potential mother, her doctor and her family to try to evaluate the extent of the risk and in the end, up to the woman to decide if the risk is one she is willing to take.

jbr writes:

jar writes:

Personhood involves several things, one is being an individual. As long as the thing under discussion is simply a growth attached to the mother, it is not a person.

See now... the problem with drawing such simplistic lines in the sand, such is this, and saying "anything on that side doesn't qualify as a person," is that there is always a situation that completely eradicates the line. For example, have you considered how many conjoined twins in the world just cringed when they read your comment that implies that one of them is nothing more than an expendable growth?

And no, there is no situation that eradicates the line without intentional misrepresentation.

I did not say "simply a growth attached to the other" rather I said "simply a growth attached to the mother".

The word "Mother" is not synonymous with the word "other".

Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

I could. But based on what I've seen in this thread, I suspect that if he participated at all, he'd dodge difficult questions while pretending that he wasn't basing his entire position on his religion. Since he's already doing that here, I see no reason to open another thread for the same thing.

Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. -- Thomas Jefferson

We see monsters where science shows us windmills. -- Phat

It has always struck me as odd that fundies devote so much time and effort into trying to find a naturalistic explanation for their mythical flood, while looking for magical explanations for things that actually happened. -- Dr. Adequate

...creationists have a great way to detect fraud and it doesn't take 8 or 40 years or even a scientific degree to spot the fraud--'if it disagrees with the bible then it is wrong'.... -- archaeologist

If ability to reproduce is the criteria then none of us qualify as human until we hit puberty. Are we really going to disqualify 8 year old kids from being human?

Incorrect, as stated above all organisms reproduce. If they did not they would cease to be alive.http://faculty.evansville.edu/...DFs/8_Cell_Reproduction.pdfBold is mineBio 100 - Cellular Reproduction1Cellular Reproduction and Genetics among EukaryotesOverviewThe perpetuation of living things (reproduction) requires cell division - the splitting ofone cell into two cellsThe events that take place inside the cell between one division and the next arecollectively called the cell cycleAnd the net results of these events is cellular reproduction

FROM WEBSTERS:life noun \ˈlīf\plural lives

Definition of LIFE

1a : the quality that distinguishes a vital and functional being from a dead bodyb : a principle or force that is considered to underlie the distinctive quality of animate beingsc : an organismic state characterized by capacity for metabolism, growth, reaction to stimuli, and reproduction2a : the sequence of physical and mental experiences that make up the existence of an individualb : one or more aspects of the process of living

Except for the fact that you seem to be completely overlooking the countless people who were declared clinically dead in hospitals and yet revived to make a complete and full recovery. Don't forget that when someone is clinically dead, all measurable brain activity stops within 20 to 40 seconds.

Usually, in those cases, there is still brain activity, but it is often below the threshold of measurment of the devices being used. In other cases, they use a different means of determining clinical death. In either respect, having no brain is clearly a scenario where there is no brain activity. Right?

This fact completely destroys the notion that measurable brain activity is a good criteria for determining person hood. And again those were people who mostly all had a very grim prognosis by the doctors.

As devices get better, we can be more and more certain as to whether there is measurable brain activity. Regardless, when the odds against a person recovering become overwhelming, there is still moral and legal precedence in terminating the machines keeping the body alive. Just because some people buck the terrible odds stacked against them does not mean we need to continue to use resources and put a family through the grief and pain of false hope on the off chance that their loved one is going to be that one in a million or one in a billion that pulls through.

I still say that brain activity is a good measure. Maybe we need to have more development in devices to measure brain activity, but if there's no brain, there's no activity. If there's no activity, measurable or not, there's no person.

So how much more is the person hood of someone we can know with pretty good certainty will have full brain activity within only 9 months?

How can you know with pretty good certainty? In the first trimester, there is still a good chance of miscarriage or self-termination. But regardless, the fact there will potentially be a person in the future has no bearing on the fact that, at present, there is no person in the womb, but there very definitely is a person outside the womb.

First of all I believe, if I'm not mistaken, you are the one who said that person hood was determined by next of kin in the hospital and compared their pulling the plug with an abortion. Secondly "feeling, caring, and knowing" is not what determines person hood. As I pointed out above there are plenty of "persons" who were incapable of all of those things and still held the status of person hood.

I used that to illustarte that brain activity is the current measure of whether a "person" is alive or not. Trying to pull the analogy further is a stretch as, in the hospital, you have a very obvious case of previous personhood. In the embryo's case, we have, by the same criterion, an obvious case of no previous personhood and only potential future personhood.

Again, in all the "other" instances to which you are referring, the prognosis is the key. Sure if a person loses all brain function and the prognosis of a qualified physician is that the person will never again regain said function, then and only then is it even considered to "pull the plug." I doubt you will find many physicians who would declare such a prognosis over a fetus in the womb that the mother is considering terminating.

You're missing the point. We're not talking about prognosis so much as when a person is considered to be alive. If there's no brian activity, the person is considered dead. In other words, no brain activity, no person. Prognosis generally only refers to people who are still alive, meaning there is still brainf activity, but often the brain activity is such that there si still reason to believe the person no longer exists.

For an embryo, if there's no brain, there's no person. If there's no person, there's no moral obligation to keep it alive. That's all it boils down to.

So an unborn foetus that is 18 weeks old is just as valuable as the woman who is hosting this foetus?

If in fact the fetus has human life how is it different than the woman hosting the fetus? So the answer is yes.

shadow writes:

It is quite a different situation from having a miscarriage to making the intentional decision to terminate a life no matter in what stage that life may be.

hooah writes:

And yet, you've failed to actually provide any evidence or even reason for this other than your personal testimony.

It seems pretty clear that there is quite a difference from a woman having a miscarriage and a woman having an abortion. Do you disagree? --------------------------------------------------------------------------------